You would have been hard pushed to find evidence that Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were coming to town in the weeks preceding their first Melbourne gig in four years.

On the surface it might seem odd that a vibrant local music scene which seems to champion any band with more than two legs and a heartbeat should overlook the return to roost of one of its more successful musical exports.

But then, Caves’s relationship with the city of his youth has been a less than plain sailing, having been forced to leave Melbourne to find fame some 22 years ago following The Birthday Party’s expulsion from practically every venue on the local circuit. In the interim Cave has called London, Sao Paulo and Berlin his home, and has returned to Oz only sporadically.

So rather than going out and killing the fattened calf as we are prone to do when our more successful prodigal sons return, the media hype surrounding the gig was comparatively muted. But that did nothing to deter the throngs of fans that crowded Melbourne’s Festival Hall from coming to see what turned out to be a rare performance.

Exactly fifteen minutes after their advertised stage time the Bad Seeds ambled on to the stage of Melbourne’s Festival Hall, and cranked into a soaring version of ‘Do You Love Me?’, Cave followed, dressed in his now trademark black three piece suit looking all for the world like a western preacher and moving with a swagger that lies somewhere between voodoo ritual and your drunk Dad doing Elvis.

It was clear from the outset that the band had upped the ante for the home show and, bar a number of softer tracks mainly culled from his more recent albums, the gig was an exercise in measured intensity, no more so than on ‘Red Right Hand’ and ‘Papa Won’t Leave Ya Henry’.

Although the crowd met his every move with rapturous applause, Cave initially responded to his audience like an estranged sibling at a family reunion, not really knowing what to do with himself and spending much of his time with his face away from the audience. Between song banter was reduced to a few mumbled thank-yous and the odd wave of appreciation until his first full sentence, exactly halfway through the concert when he admitted to ‘finding it very difficult playing Melbourne’.

Despite this, the band gave an incredibly strong performance and towards the last third of the show really connected with the crowd – pushing the gig to another level entirely making it one of Cave’s best on his mini-tour of Australia.

By the first encore, an almost cabaret version of ‘Into My Arms’, Cave looked almost like he was enjoying himself, barking at the audience to sing along, to which they responded, much to his obvious bemusement, by raising Zippos in the air. Amusement gave way to uncontrollable laughter at Blixa Bargeld’s devil sound effects during an impromptu coda at the end of ‘Stagger Lee’, a fitting climax to a long overdue homecoming.